Sunday, November 22, 2009
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Blue

© Copyright Lierre Perry. Used by permission.

Chapter 1 - Delta

The night Delta gave birth, everything seemed to stop. I don't remember if the crickets chirped, and can't recall having seen any moths---those little bats with paper wings---though on most evenings it was a past time of mine to let myself be entertained by their shadows performing on the wall facing the fireplace. I saw one little mouse, but he seemed apathetic to the usual occupations of his rodent kind, and preoccupied with being disinterested in "what usually was."

Delta hadn't been feeling well the days leading up to the delivery, and it weakened her. The fever seemed to drain her energy, and she often answered my questions as to her well-being with no more than a faint smile, which to me meant that she wasn't well, but wasn't admitting it. This was her way, and I had come to accept it, not only in her, but in others who feel no need to worry others with the time of day as they perceive it, even if asked. Being a hermit in a crowd is quite allowed, and I'd be the last to invade one's privacy, especially now having realised that different people have different degrees of personal privacy. And besides, most who hide from the world in themselves would just rather nothing to do with humanity, positive or negative, so forget the time of day altogether. But Delta would have been the first to gift her watch to you.

My point is, that prefering the company of her own soul to another human did not make her selfish. And she'd not turn away another in need, even if that need be simply to be allowed to care for her, as it was for me.

"Are you awake?" I asked softly. I hadn't wanted to stir her, but thought I ought to make sure she was ok, as it'd been hours since she sat up.

"Yes, not bad," she replied, with one of those "dont-worry-about-me" smiles, I just described. Despite this, her last syllable rode over a glinch of pain, and was followed by a deep sigh. I knew the baby was coming. I take it she knew it, too, if only by instinct, and she lay already in position.

The actual delivery was surprisingly fast, and either she didn't suffer much, or really did hold it well. It was a bit uncanny, and I can't compare it to any other delivery in all of my experience as a doctor, but I have come to learn that Delta, and everything to do with her, is something special, and not ordinary.

This was no exception in more ways than one. The eerie calm of the whole events might have sufficed to make one think, but as the infant made it's way into my hands, it was evident that she was no average baby. In fact, she was green. It was as if Heaven's light shown on her through emeralds.

A very tiny girl, my smallest delivery ever, but active and perfectly healthy. She cried when she was supposed to, and calmed down when I laid her on Delta's tummy. I tied off and cut the dark green umbilical cord, and gently wiped the dark ruby blood from her pale green skin. Carefully wiping the sweat from her mother's brow with a soft towel, and congratulating her, I asked what the little girl should be called. With a little sigh, and a sincere smile, right before she passed away, Delta replied: "Blue.

Chapter 2 - Beginnings

I never questioned Delta's reasons, for I believe myself much too wise a man for that. I wouldn't question her decisions any more than I would question God as to his creating her the way she was. And I didn't ask why this innocent young woman had to die and leave her baby perhaps alone. By the same token, I didn't have to ask what should become of this baby, for she took her mother's place under my wing, having had no one else if that'd not have been the case.

I met Delta when she was fourteen and just having run away from home. Well, she thought she was running away from home. As I had decided soon on, she'd never escape much of what tormented her, because as it would happen, she'd been running from herself. I think she learned to live with that enemy, coping with maturity, but it didn't throw her into the mainstream. I'd not say that is a pity, though.

I didn't know the father of Blue, and also didn't think it something that needed to be discovered, as there is no reason for it, and I am not a suicidal cat. When the 17-year-old Delta became with child, it was a gradual bit of common knowledge between the two of us that a baby would be born to her, and no formal discussions were made. I'd taken her in as my own child, and there would be no exception. Having Blue come into my life would be like receiving a grandchild, I expected.

Having never had a family of my own, besides of course, Delta, I couldn't have been prepared for what it would actually be like to raise Blue. And I also always left the notion in my head that her mother was not exactly average. Several traits were definitely passed on, including Delta's intelligence, self-sufficient disposition, concern for the care of others, and constant battle within one's self. As for this battle, it was my part in life, I had discovered, to be the mediator.

Blue was noticeably advanced, spoke her first words before most babies find their fingers, and never wasted time crawling about once she realised that she could pull herself to her feet. She was full of personality, even as an infant, and knew her right to have likes and dislikes, recognise pleasure and pain, and decide who is friend and who is foe.

I remember one of her earliest encounters with misfortune, as she played in the garden behind our little house on the outskirts of the small city of Weinchester. She was able to take care of herself, even at three, and knew enough not to wander into the woods that were beyond the yard. But being curious and starving for knowledge the more she got, as if she'd had a tapeworm in her head, she pushed the limits, and on this day ended outside of the old wooden fence I'd built with Delta when she'd first come to me. The last coat of paint didn't cover fifty percent of it anymore, but I couldn't bring myself to sand away Delta's gentle work. She'd fashioned childishly mature orchids around the yard with my old paints, and faded them the further she got from the house. At the end, where the door was, she'd only painted it in solid colour, and on the other side there was no paint. This other side is where Blue found the bees' nest.

As Blue had explained things to me, she'd been captivated by the sounds and motion of these small creatures, and longed to touch one. Moving away from this large humming mass, she found one on the fence, seemingly lost, and lead it to crawl on her hand. She studied the miniature lifeform for several minutes, until her little mind was satisfied with the visual input, and decided to bring it to the nest. As she neared it with her hand, and finally touched it, her innocent, unexpecting nature was startled by a tiny barage of little soldiers attacking the intruder.

I heard her scream and ran from my reading to see what was. Running up to me was a crying Blue with a swollen hand. At first I had thought perhaps she'd been bitten by a snake. But on closer examination, I noticed the small black slivers and as she calmed down, Blue told me of what had happened.

"This was a lesson for you, Blue," I said as I tweezed the objects from her tiny hand. "I know we'd like to believe it, but everyone isn't our friend."

"You're right, " she said through catching her breath, as she watched my actions intently, seemingly having forgotten that it was her hand I poked and prodded. "But they are not the enemies. Their home is the enemy. If they didn't have to protect their home, they would not have hurt me." Then, after a small pause, she added trying to hold back a smile, "They can't all be butterflies."

That was her reasoning. Perhaps staring back at you from an angle from which you've never been stared at, but impossible to argue. She made me rethink my own words, as well. Maybe I had indeed been too cynical in insinuating that these little insects, guilty of nothing but their nature, were foes. I had learned the lesson over and over in those three years already, what many people unfortunately never learn in a lifetime: ability to teach lies not in age, nor even experience, but mere existence and individuality as it exists. If one is willing to be taught, he can learn, even where no lesson is planned or presented. One shouldn't assume to know everything---well, that was clear; but not always taken to heart. To "expect the unexpected" is to never accuse something of being boring.

Then again, I have been educated enough and do not deny that the well-educated often read into things, making them seem or even become more profound than they were meant to be. But of course, isn't that the point of education?

When Delta came to me, she was determined not to go back to the things that, in her words, harmed her most. She'd begged me not to turn her in as a runaway, and told me of the fears she had for returning home, but never about them. I was an old, retired stranger, but she'd needed a shoulder and in her loneliness, had trusted me. I had wanted to get away from the society as I saw it destroying itself, and she had wanted to get away from the society as it was destroying her. And so, we were away together, and I felt like a father or grandfather to her, and she accepted my claims to wish her no ill. Being only fourteen, she hadn't completed a secondary education, but to my surprise had enjoyed reading the old books I had had in the study for years (as her daughter would later as well), since my days of school. This was enough for her, in both of our eyes, as I could support us both easily, and didn't see her being able to stand on her own feet so soon, being physically weak and often sick as well. I don't know what her plans were, as we stumbled upon each other quite accidentally, and I'd reckon she had no plan at all, which is to say in the long run I was her plan, we just didn't know it.

Delta also developed a fear of people, and as she was once very sick and I prepared to bring her to the hospital at Weinchester, she pleaded with me not to, and told me that she didn't want anyone to "find" her, and perhaps try to send her back home. And what would they do with this odd old man who kept a young girl with him in his house in the wooded mountain area just outside of the city? She hadn't meant to threaten, I knew, and was overcome with genuine fear. In the end, I reluctantly kept her with me, cared for her as well as I could in-house, felt much better after having stabilised the fever in a matter of hours, and she did fortunately recover soon after.

I was determined to give Blue better opportunities. I wanted her to receive a formal education, and know interaction with people. I know it strengthened this phobia in Delta, to be away from others for so long. She never went into the city with me, for fear of being "caught." Blue, on the other hand, quite enjoyed shopping already, and looked forward to school as I told her about it. I knew she would, and hoped things would work out. I prayed to God every night for her well-being, and my own health that I could be there for her. Sometimes God answers our prayers just how we expect Him to; other times, we wonder if we should have spoken up.

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